“Remember what I said,” I tell Gul, feeling my shoulders tense as we close the distance with our feet. “You are a queen’s serving girl, and you lost your badge while shopping in the bazaar this morning. And when they ask for your name, make sure to add Rani-putri to it. By tradition, the queens’ maids must use Rani-putri to replace their own family names, showing full dedication to the queen they have been chosen to serve.”
Gul nods curtly, not speaking until we’re at the gate. I tuck in my shoulders, trying to look as unobtrusive as possible, while Gul squares hers, an act that thrusts out her breasts.
I feel my face flush.
The guard leers when she approaches, taking her in with his greedy gaze—until it reaches her face—the hard disapproval etched in every muscle, forcing his grin to dissipate.
“Name and identification,” he says.
“Rani-putri Siya,” Gul replies, her voice cool, the consonants sharp the way they are here in the city, her village accent completely gone. “I lost my badge in the market this morning.”
The guard frowns, his brown pupils sharpening in their yellow eye-beds—as if noticing for the first time the too-long sleeves of Gul’s blouse, the skirt that drags across the ground ever so slightly. “What do you mean you lost it? I can’t let you in without a badge!”
“Don’t let me in and the rani will hear about it,” she replies with a perfect touch of arrogance, cleverly avoiding mention of a specific queen’s name. “Ask him if I’m lying.” Sharply angling her head to the side, she gestures me forward. “You! Come here!”
I wince, not having to pretend the discomfort that creeps up my spine when the guard’s attention falls on me.
“What do you know about this?” I see him eyeing my turban pin.
“She works for the palace.” I am careful to keep my own answer as vague as Gul’s. “She lost her badge in the market.”
“O ho!” His sneer becomes more pronounced. “Which rani does she work for?”
“You will know that answer once I tell her you were the reason I couldn’t reach her on time,” Gul cuts in.
The guard’s face, likely bloated from gorging on kachoris during every break, reddens. “If you went to the market, where are your packages? Show me what’s in there!” he demands, grabbing for her bundle.
Gul smartly steps out of reach, giving him a sneer that could rival Major Shayla’s. “The rani’s packages are her own business. Surely you don’t mean to intervene in her private matters?”
“Hold on.” Another guard joins the first one and murmurs something in his ear.
While the first guard’s expression says he would like to do nothing better than pummel Gul, after talking to his colleague, he briefly inclines his head in her direction. “Forgive me, Siya ji. You may go in this time. But next time, I will not be able to let you in without identification.”
Siya ji. As if Gul were a senior staff member and not a girl who’s probably only just come of age.
“I’m well aware of that.” Gul’s voice is cold. “You!” she tells me again. “Carry this for me!”
She tosses that precious bundle of hers at me so quickly that I nearly trip over my own feet catching it. I say nothing about how heavy it feels. Instead, I follow her in, through the gates, ignoring the glare we both receive from the guard.
Once inside, Gul turns to me. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For treating you like that in front of that guard.” She frowns. “I know you don’t think much of me or … my kind, but I don’t think you are less than me. I never have.”
Though I know by you she means non-magi, somehow, the way she phrased it makes the declaration seem more personal. More about me. I shrug off the fanciful notion and hold out the bundle. “Here you go. I didn’t peek or anything.” Even though I’m now wondering what she has in there.
Her brown cheeks flush slightly, and she takes it without a word.
“What do you think of the Walled City?” I ask.
She looks around, her eyes widening as she finally takes everything in for the first time—havelis, houses, and shops built much like the rest of Ambarvadi, stacked in a series of steep inclines and steps, except for the colors, which range from saffron and peacock blue to pistachio green and rose-petal pink.
“They look like boxes from the sweet seller’s,” Gul says with awe. And though I’ve never heard them described that way before, I can’t help but see the similarities now between the houses and the gift boxes I saw at the sweet seller’s stall during the moon festival.
“We’ll have to take the blue staircase,” I tell her. “The place where you can get yourself a replacement badge is on the way.”
Sidestepping a skinny brown dog sleeping by the side of the road, we pass one of the first houses—blue like the color of the steps—a woman sweeping the corridor of dirt. Her eyes sharpen when she spots us, and she instantly shuts the door in our faces.
“Friendly,” Gul comments.
“It’s how it is here.” I try to ignore the numerous eyes that suddenly seem to be on us. “It’s how you know you’re inside the Walled City.”
“They make the grouchy head thanedar in Javeribad look congenial,” she says with a laugh.
I wince; the laugh, though not very loud, only attracts more glares. Gul notices as well, her smile fading.
“Are people really so unhappy here?” Her voice is more subdued now.
“Unhappy is probably their version of joy.”
She says nothing in response, says nothing at all until we’re standing
